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Saw this movie tonight now that my local theater has it, i really enjoyed it and thought it was a good movie. Am i allowed to like it or are we still trying to decide if its ultra racist and evil?
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Apr 15, 2018 03:57
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| # ? May 2, 2024 08:58 |
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Interesting take https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-isle-of-dogs-gets-right-about-japan
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Apr 15, 2018 04:09
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Len posted:Saw this movie tonight now that my local theater has it, i really enjoyed it and thought it was a good movie. i mean, even if it is racist, you're still allowed to like it. something being problematic doesn't make its existence horrible and evil, it just means it has issues that we should talk about and confront. people honestly read a lot more inherent hostility into these discussions than i think is warranted.
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Apr 15, 2018 04:10
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I have yet to hear anyone suggest it's "ultra racist and evil" except for the people who are angry about the people who are talking about the use of Japanese stuff in the movie.
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Apr 15, 2018 04:48
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I think it speaks volumes that even friendly 2 da void is able to acknowledge the obvious aesthetic of the film, but still comes away with the appraisal that the dogs are more nuanced than the humans. Which is to say, the irony is that one of the most nuanced character in the movie is the film's villain, who, after hearing his nephew read a haiku, suddenly realizes the error of his ways and does a complete 180 on his whole "murder all the dogs" plan. This itself is a parallel to Chief's own near-sudden about face with respect to the same character, and for the same reason of being enlightened by his compassionate character. It goes without saying that none of the characters in the film are particularly 'nuanced.' They all state exactly how they feel, and because of Anderson's idiosyncratic style, these statements are often made directly into the camera. Anderson is a very cheeky filmmaker, he's very overtly distrustful of sentimental conventions by which 'nuance' or 'depth' are measured in, like, expository information about a character's 'personal experience' or being histrionically emotive. There's no room for 'suspension of disbelief' in this aesthetic, it's all very obviously a diorama where even 'serious' dialog is performed with a degree of comic distanciation. Where this proves to be one of Anderson's most radical experiments in his own style yet is precisely the juxtaposition between the English and Japanese language. Obviously, our interpreter is there to provide certain exposition and context, but there's still a surprising amount of the film that is staged simply by looking dead-on at a character's face and watching them speak. The insinuation is that the interpreter is not extra-diegetic, but simply diegetic, a character whose job it is to translate, and does this job too well, erecting a wall between Megacity and the supposed 'outside world' through the sheer pretense of the illegibility of emotion. The film poses a very obvious and very important question: Why must we force something to be 'intelligible'? Why is it not enough that we simply look and listen?
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Apr 15, 2018 05:27
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:i'm really not sure why everyone's so incredibly hostile to the idea that, while this movie definitely means well, the way it treats Japanese people is kind of hosed up and dehumanizing The main issue is that you don’t understand what racism and antiracism are, and you’re consequently mixing them up with, like, ‘intolerance’ and ‘multiculturalism’ (respectively). Racism is an ideology, and pure ideology is impossible. The film obviously depicts dehumanization, because it’s about the rise of a totalitarian state - but the antiracist approach would be to explain this dehumanization in socioeconomic terms. You are not doing that. You are explaining it in racial terms: that the totalitarian government in the film is a product of Japanese racial inferiority. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Apr 15, 2018 |
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Apr 15, 2018 09:05
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Oh! What a Lovely Discourse
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Apr 15, 2018 16:33
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:i'm really not sure why everyone's so incredibly hostile to the idea that, while this movie definitely means well, the way it treats Japanese people is kind of hosed up and dehumanizing I feel like this is abstracting things to the point of absurdity. Which is kind of ironic* when the conversation is about nuance and dehumanization. For example SMg's big point was largely a response to icantfindaname's post here: icantfindaname posted:You don’t think having the Japanese people speaking unsubtitled Japanese compared to the dogs who are the protagonists and voiced by a bunch of your favorite actors is dehumanizing? It’s flipping the normal scenario upside down, where human characters speak understandable English and animals speak unintelligible gibberish language. It’s using the Japanese people as a mute aesthetic prop, symbolically reversing their status vis-a-vis animals, and hammering into the audience’s brain that they are an alien Other who needs a white savior character to come and identify the sinister conspiracy and dysfunction at the heart of their society He makes an unfortunate comparison here to Japanese as an "unintelligible gibberish language" which would be easy to single out, but I get that that's not what he meant. But even the overall point is kind of rife with the implication that in order for the characters to be "humanized" they need to be properly understood by the white western audience; like what validates someone as human is whether some guy sitting in an American theater can understand what they're saying. The fact that they're not fully subtitled and that the dogs are voiced by our beloved actors (compared to the Japanes actors voicing the Japanes people) is the key reason that they're "dehumanized". But despite their "voicelessness" their actions and motivations are crystal clear even if you don't understand Japanese: there's several Japanese people who fight and risk their lives on behalf of the dogs, and one is literally murdered and mourned, all right there on the screen. * I mean this in a kind of "heh, that's interesting" way, not trying to drag you or imply you're actually dehumanizing people by over-simplifying their internet arguments, that would be silly
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Apr 15, 2018 17:48
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It's too bad Wes Anderson didn't have a love of Nollywood, I'd love to see the discourse around that movie.
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Apr 15, 2018 19:26
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The issue is also this humanist ideology itself. LORD’s stance is either that the film humanize the protofascists or, worse, that you are simply not allowed to make films about Japan unless they are apolitical celebrations of the beautiful Japanese culture, ethnic dances and so-on. That, of course, is its own form of racism in the basic sense that covers up the systemic nature of racism and falsely condemns authentic progressive politics as ‘cultural imperialism’ / race mixing. And this is a film explicitly about class struggle: “It is clear that in classical Hollywood, the couple of vampires and zombies designates class struggle. Vampires are rich, they live among us. Zombies are the poor, living dead, ugly, stupid, attacking from outside. And it's the same with cats and dogs. Cats are lazy, evil, exploitative, dogs are faithful, they work hard, so if I were to be in government, I would tax having a cat, tax it really heavy.” -Zizek
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Apr 15, 2018 20:01
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Rather than perpetuating the thing I've already complained about, here's a cool poster for the movie by Akira creator Katsushiro Otomo
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Apr 16, 2018 00:13
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That's fuckin' dope.
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Apr 16, 2018 00:23
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An interview with Kunichi Nomura, the voice of Kobayashi but also consulted on the look, script, and directed the Japanese voice cast. He wanted to channel Toshiro Mifune in his performance and hopes younger Japanese viewers will discover Kurosawa's work. I don't buy the argument that the film is dehumanizing or racist. It makes no moral judgments against the humans who aren't villains, the various human characters receive as much screen time as the dogs themselves, and there are multiple vignettes showing their history or culture in explicit detail. Aside from Tracy there are no foreign elements and her role isn't as a savior but an outsider whose only risk of breaking the law is deportation as opposed to imprisonment or death. And even then the day is literally saved by Atari's compassion, the hacker, and the murdered doctor.
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Apr 16, 2018 03:46
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Listen a theater full of hipsters giggling at near every line like Wes is God's gift to writing may not have been the best way to see this movie. At some point it feels like they're just laughing at the way Japanese people look and sound.
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Apr 16, 2018 13:41
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exmarx posted:Interesting take https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-isle-of-dogs-gets-right-about-japan BTFO all who question why subtitles weren't used. It's a shame that reviews have become nothing but libtards policing everyone. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 17, 2018 23:31
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pleasecallmechrist posted:libtards gently caress off
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Apr 17, 2018 23:41
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pleasecallmechrist posted:BTFO all who question why subtitles weren't used. It's a shame that reviews have become nothing but libtards policing everyone. Lol how have you lasted 5 years here with posting of this high standard Good article tho, if a bit brief DeimosRising fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 17, 2018 23:43
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DeimosRising posted:Lol how have you lasted 5 years here with posting of this high standard Purposeful irreverence for those who would assume a movie crafted as meticulously as a Wes Anderson film would leave out subtitles out of carelessness rather than an artistic and thereby purposeful choice. Also, occasional mental reversion to 4chan
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Apr 18, 2018 01:02
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Wes should've nixed the translator and have the one English speaking human character (the freckles schoolgirl) speak loud gibberish like Homer after he coated his tongue with wax and ate the insanity pepper.
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Apr 18, 2018 03:27
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Bard Maddox posted:I liked the movie but I was disappointed that the four dogs who went through the incinerator factory got sidelined hard for the rest of the movie after they went in. I wanted more of their interactions! I think this might have been the point! Even though the dogs are revealed to have survived, they are effectively "dead" to the narrative for the remainder of the movie?
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Apr 19, 2018 10:58
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Fun film. Loved all the dogs. One thing strange me to though is that i talked with some Japanese friends who watched it and they reported that they Japanese in the film does not sound natural. To them, it sounds like a non-native trying to speak and write in Japanese. I cant figure out if this was a style decision by Anderson? It seems like today it should be fairly easy to find a native speaker to make the language flow correctly.
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Apr 24, 2018 02:46
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The English language in Wes Anderson's later filmography isn't really naturalistic, either.
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Apr 24, 2018 03:26
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checkplease posted:Fun film. Loved all the dogs. I don’t speak Japanese but since it’s all performed by Japanese actors it seems unlikely they didn’t realize the dialogue was stylized
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Apr 24, 2018 16:56
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DeimosRising posted:I don’t speak Japanese but since it’s all performed by Japanese actors it seems unlikely they didn’t realize the dialogue was stylized Possibly. But I am taking the word of my friend whose first language is Japanese and said the way they spoke didn't sound natural and did bother her some. It does seem like Japanese actors could correct their lines if there were issues though, so I would assume it must be intentional. Guess I am more just trying to understand the purpose than state that there was a problem.
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Apr 25, 2018 02:29
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It wasn't left up to the entire Japanese cast to correct. They read the dialog that was translated - effectively co-written - for them by Kunichi Nomura, who performed the voice of Mayor Kobayashi, and who received a story credit for the film. Again, to be blunt, nobody speaks naturalistically in a Wes Anderson movie.
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Apr 25, 2018 02:41
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I think those Japanese friends need to brush up on their Andersonese yukk yukk!!
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Apr 25, 2018 02:47
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On to the real problem: Were there any Japanese dogs in this film? I don't remember any shiba's or akitas, though I could have just missed them with how great Chief and Spots were. Or maybe Sport was like hachiko and simply died waiting...
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Apr 25, 2018 03:02
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checkplease posted:On to the real problem: Were there any Japanese dogs in this film? I don't remember any shiba's or akitas, though I could have just missed them with how great Chief and Spots were. Or maybe Sport was like hachiko and simply died waiting... I didn't even think about this. Why wasn't there any shibas. This is bullshit.
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Apr 25, 2018 03:43
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My girlfriend commented that that they spoke Japanese in a learning style.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:17
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Bolek posted:I didn't even think about this. Why wasn't there any shibas. This is bullshit. Hollywood and its white savior dog breeds. When will it end.
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Apr 25, 2018 05:14
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K. Waste posted:I think it speaks volumes that even friendly 2 da void is able to acknowledge the obvious aesthetic of the film, but still comes away with the appraisal that the dogs are more nuanced than the humans. The distance in sentimentality Anderson displays really renders this movie inert. Didn't matter how many tears dogs and children would cry, this movie is missing an emotional core that has lessened my initial enthusiasm for this movie into something much more lukewarm. It's Anderson's worst movie. It's not a bad movie tho, just the least of what's he's put out.
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Apr 25, 2018 15:00
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I think the sentimental neutering is a concession being made while the movie criticizes certain elements of Japanese society. I know that bushisms(sp) in the GenChat thread was bringing up stereotypes, I actually still want to see them express their argument, but in lieu of that I think it's telling that people are asking for, say, "Japanese dogs" in a movie about a Japan that's several decades from now. There are breeds of dogs that are commonly seen in Japan, but what makes a Shiba Inu "Japanese" vs one that's in America? The wasteland that the movie depicts is a Japan as this discarded product at this point in history. I see people talking about racism and poo poo, but who actually gives a poo poo about the lives of Japanese people? I think the movie is wonderful, and I appreciate its sobriety in the face of having a good cry then resigning ourselves to how things are or creating some false hope.
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Apr 25, 2018 15:12
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Corrosion posted:what makes a Shiba Inu "Japanese" vs one that's in America? The fact that inu is the Japanese word for dog?
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Apr 25, 2018 15:48
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The fact that inu is the Japanese word for dog? Does that mean the Japanese claim all dogs? Are you seeing the problem with this? Language immediately becomes a barrier that you arbitrarily set up to say what is and what isn't essential to some other culture's personhood/identity/ownership. It's what they call dog. Guess what? Again, "anime" is what Japanese people call "cartoons." X-Men to them is a cartoon from America. Except the difference here is area of production, so if a Shiba is born and raised in the states, is it still Japanese? It's a dumb question. e: More simply, the film is mindful of how stupid exoticism is. Corrosion fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 15:56
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I don't know if it's ever been made official or anything, but Shiba's are basically the Japanese national dog. Like how bulldogs are the British national dog. (I could be wrong.)
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Apr 25, 2018 16:12
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Well going back, there was a point earlier about differing to Japanese speakers despite this film having a credited Japanese writer. It seems silly to defer to native speakers, though clearly there is a Japanese language, in light of this. That's assuming way more self-awareness than what actually exists. It's a product of this refusal to actually see the subject of Japan as something beyond what is familiar or established as "essential." That Japan has to play to an expectation of what we think is Japanese. Japanese entertainment for instance, have a pretty intimate relationship with the United States, and there are parts of corporations that ensure that what is sent overseas is culturally "universal" enough. The criticism is usually that these products end up being "odorless" or lacking in anything significantly cultural relative to Japan. Nonetheless, marketability is usually the basis of what comes over, and most people's relationships with Japan are from such commodities. The wasteland/collage that features the earthquake-crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant also includes various factories and means of entertainment. It's already been stated, but there's already an expectation of what is essentially Japanese, and I think this film ridicules that expectation with things like having characters that are implicitly or explicitly bi-lingual, for instance. They aren't "just" Japanese speakers that only speak Japanese. My point about the Inu isn't necessarily that it's not from Japan or whatever, it's that people are asking "Why aren't these Japanese dogs in this Japanese movie (which is really a co-produced/written venture between what I can identify as one American writer and a Japanese writer)?" Corrosion fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 16:43
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I like the lack of subtitles in the film, especially when Atari is talking to the dogs. Really gives you the perspective of how we talk to our animals even though they don't understand a drat thing we say.
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Apr 25, 2018 18:22
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Corrosion posted:Well going back, there was a point earlier about differing to Japanese speakers despite this film having a credited Japanese writer. It seems silly to defer to native speakers, though clearly there is a Japanese language, in light of this. That's assuming way more self-awareness than what actually exists. It's a product of this refusal to actually see the subject of Japan as something beyond what is familiar or established as "essential." That Japan has to play to an expectation of what we think is Japanese. Questions about the spoken Japanese language had nothing to do with what is this ideal Japanese you refer to, but more like that was an unexpected word choice, and people wonder why the director/writer decided to choose that word. Its not saying anything bad about the film or what it represents, but rather just trying to understand more at this. We do this all the time with English already and has nothing to do with what an ideal America/Europe/whatever country. And I don't think anyone actually cares what types of dogs were shown beyond the fact that we think Shibas are cute. Or do you want to argue that they are not in fact cute dogs?
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Apr 26, 2018 02:09
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maybe we got lucky: https://twitter.com/Amanda_d1234/status/988442734779301890
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Apr 26, 2018 02:26
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| # ? May 2, 2024 08:58 |
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Magic Hate Ball posted:maybe we got lucky: Actually, no, this is a better idea. "Spotsu!... Spotsu!..." *snort* ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
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Apr 26, 2018 02:28
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